Creepypasta Wiki:Deletion FAQ
Why did my story get deleted? There's a lot of possible reasons: * Does not meet quality standards. This is the most common and also the broadest. This will be the deletion reason if your story has improper formatting, bad grammar, bad spelling, is nonsensical, silly or poorly told. * Housekeeping. Same as the above, but usually only used for stories that are more than a year or so old. They might have been deemed acceptable at the time they were posted, but have since fallen out of favor; stories deleted from 2011 to mid-2013 usually fall in this category. Anything else probably would have been deleted had somebody noticed it before it fell off the radar. * Re-uploaded page. If your story was deleted, then you posted it again it will be deleted once more for this reason. This will happen even if you've fixed some mistakes. * Unfinished page. We do not allow unfinished pages. There are very rare exceptions, if enough of the story is there AND, more importantly, if the writing is quality. Otherwise, an unfinished page is deleted immediately. * Spin-off/Blacklisted subject. We do not accept stories involving ANY creepypasta characters already in existence. Furthermore, we do not accept stories on a variety of subjects including, but not limited to, haunted video games, lost episodes, Pokemon, My Little Pony and ROBLOX. A full list of blacklisted subjects can be seen here: Spinoffs * Jeff the Killer rip-off. If your story hews close to the plot of Jeff the Killer, that is grounds for deletions. If your story is about a kid who is bullied, gets hurt, goes crazy, kills their family, kills their bullies, has a catchphrase, etc, it will be removed for being a Jeff rip-off. * Lack story/content. If your story is barely a story, then it will be deleted. Your story does not have to be long. Mother's Call and Bad Dream are perfect stories. They have a complete plot and effective endings. Compare those to Apple Company is Watching Us. Nothing happens. Also, if your story is mostly fluff, mostly just inconsequential material and then the ending, it may be deleted for this reason. * Clichéd. If your story is almost indistinguishable from 100 other creepypastas, it will be deleted for this reason. For a list of the most common clichés consult this page: Creepy Clichés * Not creepypasta. In general, we are very lenient about what we consider "scary" or "creepy." However, there is a limit. If your story is completely mundane, it will be deleted for this reason. How can I find out SPECIFICALLY why my story was deleted? Two ways: # ASK. It's that simple. Ask the person who deleted your story. You can find out who did it by going to where your pasta previously was. There will be a box that will tell you who performed the deletion. If you don't remember how to get to your page, you can look through the . This shows you all the pages that have been deleted and who did it. Almost all of the people with the power to delete a story are willing to provide you a critique. Some have specific pages set up for it. Make sure you sign your message (USING THE SIGNATURE BUTTON IN THE TOOLBAR) and tell them the name of your story. # Deletion Appeal. Deletion Appeal is a place where your story will get a second look and has a chance to be restored. If your appeal is denied, the person who reviewed it will explain why. I didn't save a copy of my story, how can I get one? Ask any on their talk page. Make sure you sign your post (USING THE SIGNATURE BUTTON ON THE TOOLBAR) and specify which story you need a copy of. In the future, you should save your own work. Can I re-post my creepypasta? No. That is against the rules. If you re-upload your story, you will receive a warning. If you do it again, you will be banned for one day. The ban length will double for each offense after that. How do I get my creepypasta back on the site? Deletion Appeal. This is a place for you to go and explain why you think your story shouldn't have been deleted. Then, your story will be reviewed by an admin and your request will be approved or denied. If approved, your story will be restored to the site. If your appeal is denied, you can re-write your story and re-submit an appeal. Make sure you put a link to your revised story in your appeal. I revised my story, can I re-post it without going through deletion appeal? No. If your story is well-written and it was removed for something like formatting, text walls, coding errors, then a re-uploaded story might not be deleted. However, if your story was removed for quality standards reasons like grammar, spelling or story issues, then it needs to be checked to make sure it's improved. There is an alternate option in the writer's workshop. This is a way to get feedback and work on your story. However, just because one person says your story is good does not mean you should re-post it. It is best to either ask an or wait until you get multiple positive reviews before re-uploading. Why do you have quality standards? Because we want good stories. Why do you expect stories to be perfect? We don't. We expect stories to be competent. No story is deleted because it has a few problems. They're always deleted for having a lot of problems. A handful of typos and grammatical mistakes is natural, even after proof-reading. However, if it's obvious that you didn't proof-read or you don't know how to write properly then it gets deleted. A few stories mis-steps is okay. Sometimes things don't work out. On the other hand, if the story is hugely cliched, if it doesn't make sense, if it's completely poorly told then it gets deleted. Aren't your quality standards too harsh? No. In general, all we ask is that people write properly and tell a well thought out story that's not a mirror of 1,000 other creepypastas. Do you use proper grammar? Do you punctuate properly? Do you spell correctly? Does your story make sense? Does it feel like something that hasn't been done 100 time in the exact same way? Is the writing tight? If so, you should be safe. Why don't you tell people why their story was deleted? Why do we have to ask? It's simply too much work to do automatically for someone who might not care. A good critique can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. Everyone on this site is a volunteer. They take time out of their day to keep the site clean and give writing advice. Some users don't care their story was deleted. More than that, some aren't willing to take criticism or accept that their story might not be good. It's too much time to spend on something a user might not read or care about. If you care about your story, you can take the time to ask. Why don't you give people a warning their story will be deleted? For several reasons: * You have all the time in the world to prepare your story before putting it on the site. There is no reason for us to give you extra time. * There is no guarantee that a person will be willing or even capable of revising their story to make it meet quality standards. * Any amount of time we give people to revise their work would be completely arbitrary. How long is long enough? A day? A week? People will still complain and make excuses. A zero-tolerance policy is clear-cut and allows for no wiggle room. * It's an inefficient system. This site is incredibly busy and we receive dozens of pastas every day. If we take the bad ones and set them aside, the site doesn't get cleaner. It just gets messier and it's a mess that we have to keep around and monitor. If you have a bag of trash what makes more sense: getting rid of it or keeping it around and hoping it will stop being trash? Meanwhile, you're filling up another bag of trash and soon you'll have two bags to deal with. Why don't you let users decide whether a story is good or bad? Three reasons: # We have over 10,000 pages on this wiki. We get dozens of new stories every day. The chances of someone reading your story is low. The chance of them commenting is even lower. The chances of MULTIPLE people reading and commenting is so unlikely that it's not an efficient system for judging quality. # This would be an easy system to cheat. Someone could just get their friends to come on and rave about the story. # Popularity DOES NOT equal quality. Think about how many popular things you hate and think sucks. Justin Bieber. . .Twilight. . .stuff like that. Immensely popular, but is it actually good? Why don't you take the time to teach people to be better writers? That is in no way the purpose of this site. There is nothing in our description that would lead anyone to believe that this is a place for people to learn to write. We don't for the same reason that Netflix doesn't send people headphones. It's not our business. That said, we do offer ways for people to get better. We have a Writer's Workshop forum where you can get feedback on your story without it being deleted and several writing advice blogs. Why did my story get deleted when there are worse stories still on the site? Just because other bad creepypastas still exist does not mean your story isn't bad. We have over 10,000 pages on this site. We have not combed through all of them, so there are still stories that we haven't gotten around to checking. It's easier to monitor new stories, then it is to go through old ones. New stories appear in the recent activity logs. Old stories usually have to be found by chance. If you want to point out low quality work to us, that would be great. Don't you care about how much time I spent on this? No. We get this complaint a lot. Someone tells us how they spent two hours, eight hours, a day, a month working on their story. They ask how we DARE to just throw their work away. It doesn't matter how long you say you spent writing your story. If it's bad, it's bad and we delete it. Effort is shown, not told. You can spend hours cooking, but if the food doesn't taste good telling people about how long you spent making it won't change that. It's the same with writing. Don't you care about people's feelings? Honestly? No. This is a privately run literature site. The administration of this wikia have established rules for people to follow. If the consequences for not following the rules causes someone's feelings to be hurt, then that's a shame. However, that's the danger of playing in someone else's house. There are many sites where you can have your own, private little space. DeviantArt, Quotev, sites like that give you a place where you can do whatever you like. This is not one of those places. If you're not comfortable with other people being able to decide the fate of your work, you should not come here. We don't set out to hurt anyone's feelings, but we also don't tip-toe around so that it never happens. We don't force people to post their stories here. Everyone makes a conscious choice to display their work on this site and, by doing so, they agree that their work is subject to the rules and to the judgement of the admins even if the user is ignorant of our rules and procedures. HAVEN'T YOU EVER HEARD OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH?!?! Of course. However, it doesn't apply here. This is a private site that is open to the public. Think of it as a restaurant. You can go into a restaurant and talk about whatever you want. That is, until you start screaming obscenities and racial slurs. Then, the restaurant management can ask you to leave. The restaurant is not bound by free speech any more than we are. If we don't like something, we can remove it.